


A Soul on Fire

by cricket_aria



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Don't Starve Together, Gen, Pyromania, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Burning everything you see proves to not be the wisest of survival tactics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



Gathering firewood for the night was Willow’s job, the only one which was hers alone when everything else was shared out. If the only fire she was allowed to start now was the one that kept them safe through the night, then she would never allow anyone else to have a thing to do with the making or tending of it.

It hadn’t been like that before. When she first woke up alone in the strange new world she’d been trapped in—a world of monsters and hunger and fear, yes, but also a world with no parents or teachers or doctors whose voices went sharp with fear when they said “How did you get that lighter, Willow? Put it down, _put it down now!_ ”—she’d realized at once that she could finally, _finally_ , set all the world ablaze and no one would ever stop her or complain.

It had been wonderful. It had been perfect. She knew for real now what it was like to watch flames flying across a grassland, sparks jumping on their own between the tall, dried-out tufts as if they wanted to spread just as much as she wanted to watch them do so, no longer just having second-hand stories to guide her imagination. She remembered the sounds of rabbits screaming in their burrows as they burned then of tearing their flesh, more charcoal than meat, off their bones with her teeth and loving the way it tasted like burning. She’d set fire to the largest tree she could find and watched it climb the branches all the way to the top then burn away until nothing was left but the broken, blackened skeleton of its limbs.

She didn’t know how long it took her to even realize that monsters came out in the dark, because she was always surrounded by blazing light.

She wished that she could have gone on that way forever, but things that were left to burn became fewer and fewer. Then came hunger. Darkness. Wolves. The world that had seemed so perfect in spite of its dangers became a trap she didn’t know she could survive (though it hadn’t stopped her from laughing with joy as much as ever when the lightning came and set the small camp she’d managed to make for herself aflame). That she _hadn’t_ survived, more than once, only to wake up each time she’d thought she was gone forever curled up against the weird stones which she always felt like she had to touch that were dotted around the world. 

The last she’d known there were no stones left, unless she could find a way to cross the water surrounding her little patch of heaven-turned-hell to search for others.

Then that world, for the first and only time since it stopped giving her things to burn, showed her a mercy. Once more she’d woken up in a strange new place, just like when she’d first come there. A new land fit for burning, still full of trees and beasts and all kinds of flammable things. A new land where she _wasn’t alone_ , there was a woman standing beside her looking just as surprised at the change as Willow herself was.

Surprise that the woman—Wickerbottom, Willow learned later, though she hadn’t even taken the time to introduce herself then—had almost immediately shaken off with a quick click of her tongue as she’d looked Willow over. “Well, bothersome though it might be to start over, this should certainly make things easier,” she’d said. “I’ll seek out the things to make an axe, dear, why don’t you go gather berries and any carrots you find for tonight’s repast?” Then she’d gone off without even waiting to see if Willow agreed.

Wickerbottom was just like that, Willow had quickly learned. As to-the-point as a person who also liked using fancy words whenever there was a chance could be. She hadn’t been trying to be rude, she’d just known as well as Willow did by then how hard their new land could be if it was as bad as the ones they’d been trapped in before, and hadn’t wanted to waste any time in making sure they’d be prepared for night.

Luckily Willow had been fine with that first plan, so she hadn’t taken offense. She wasn’t hungry anymore, whatever magic had teleported her somehow also saving her from the starvation she’d been right on the edge of, but the memory of it was still close enough in her mind that getting to stuff handfuls of berries into her mouth as she gathered more into her pockets sounded like the best plan she’d ever heard. She would never burn a berry bush again, never leave herself with only the skimpiest of food supplies left to be found anywhere at all, that was one lesson she’d learned well.

Most everything else had still been fair game.

Wickerbottom hadn’t known at first. Willow didn’t think she had, at any rate, although she seemed so much like she knew _everything_ that maybe she just hadn’t said anything. Willow certainly hadn’t tried to hide the evidence of what she did, leaving scorch marks on the ground where she’d built up little piles of twigs just to combust them or her beautiful blacked tree skeletons standing to clearly show what had happened to them. Never much at once, another lesson she had taken to heart. As much as Willow longed to see her fires stretching from horizon to horizon she had learned how necessary it was to have plenty of supplies at hand to create things out of. But there couldn’t be anything wrong with just a little fire here and there, could there?

The change had come when she’d set a new grasslands on fire. Not all of it again, Willow had been as careful as could be to cut away all the long grass around just one smallish patch of land so it wouldn’t spread past where she could control it. She’d known what she was doing.

She’d also known that a beefalo and its child had wandered into the patch before she started the fire. That had been what Wickerbottom had seemed most enraged by when she’d come to investigate the smoke and had found Willow still fingering her lighter as she’d grinned at the flames. Willow had never realized that someone so old could be so scary until she’d seen the look on Wickerbottom’s face then, like her self-control had been the only thing keeping her from ripping Willow’s skin right off. She’d dragged Willow back to camp and forced her to sit on the ground. “You shall remain _right there_ until I can trust myself to speak to you,” she’d snapped, then settled down herself to work on a snare and completely ignore Willow.

Wickerbottom’s face she she’d worked that day had been the first thing Willow had ever watched as intently as a fire. The terror twisting and squirming in her stomach wouldn’t let her do anything else, she had to see Wickerbottom’s mouth slowly unpursing, the tight deep lines around her eyes softening back into her usual wrinkles, every little sign that her rage was gradually dispersing without WIllow ever being flayed by tentacles. Willow didn't know if it was the distraction of the work itself calming her or imagining the birds which could eventually fill it, but either was she was grateful that it was working.

Finally Wickerbottom had sighed and set the finished trap aside. “I understand that flames are beautiful, child. There are few joys in life like curling up in front of a crackling fire with a good book,” she’d started, and that more than anything had been what made Willow listen. Many people had tried to make her stop setting fires before, but they’d always gone on and on about how frightening it was, how dangerous, how much it could hurt people and how many things it could destroy. They’d never agreed with her that it was glorious.

So Willow had sat and listened as Wickerbottom went on. "Beyond that, it's not as though I don't understand having an interest in things most folks shy away from. I know that you don't understand the power of words, dear, so few of the youth of today do, but believe me when I tell you that language can be as dangerous as any flame in the hand of those who know how to make proper use of it. However, in this place we must be _prudent_." She'd used the word as if she simply expected Willow to know it, and it wasn't until later that Willow admitted her ignorance and finally learn that it meant that, even though to Willow burning everything nearby was the best thing she could ever do, they had to worry more about what they could do to stay alive and healthy than what made them happy. That she didn’t want either of them to die, so Willow couldn’t just run around gratuitously setting fires, even ones she thought were too small to do any real harm, when they never knew what they might one day need to survive. "Perhaps we could do without the grass, or a conifer or two here or there, but that was a terrible waste of those beefalo! Those creatures can provide us with manure for any agricultural pursuits we might attempt, with protection if monsters attack whilst we're near the herd, and with fur which we can fashion into apparel which will help us last out the coming winter. Burning everything we can for warmth is a solution that would not last us long! Do you understand me?"

Willow had clenched her teeth tightly for just a moment, her lighter calling out to her that she couldn't just leave its flame unfed, but Wickerbottom had made her case too well. More importantly, she had never said that Willow _couldn't_ light her fires again, or that she _shouldn't_ , just that she had to be careful about it. And she'd already known that, even if she'd still gotten a little carried away. "All right," she said. "Okay. I won't set things on fire unless there is a _very_ good reason to. But... but you've got to let me be in charge of the firepit! You can't tell me to stop completely!"

Wickerbottom bowed her head to the demand. "Very well. I believe that deal shall suit us both." She seemed more at ease, although it was always a little difficult for Willow to tell when she always kept her posture stiffly upright, and reached into her bag to pull out the makings of another snare, This time she didn't leave Willow in icy silence. Instead she nodded to her and said, "Now, perhaps you might learn for yourself a little of the power of words. Tell me why fire entices you so, my girl, and do your best to make me understand it."

"It's beautiful," Willow said at once. "More beautiful than any thing else. Not just the color and the light, the sound is better than any kind of music..." And so Willow had rambled on, her words rushing out of her more quickly than she could ever remember before at being with someone who was actually willing to listen to her about the one thing she loved most. And Wickerbottom had sit and listened, even asking questions to get more detail out of her, and in the time to come she proved herself worthy of learning about Willow's passion by turning a blind-eye the times Willow slipped. The days when stress became so bad that her lighter had sparked almost before Willow had even known what she was doing and whatever was closest to her was suddenly blazing, the flames so beautiful that they set her heart at peace. Those times were fewer and more far between than Willow would have expected, she did her very best to prove herself worthy of Wickerbottom's trust in her as well, and keep to just the nightly fire. 

Gathering firewood had become her job alone, the only one she wouldn’t share. It wasn’t enough, keeping herself to one fire alone each day, always in the same spot, always safely contained, would _never_ be enough. But Wickerbottom kept Willow safe and fed and alive, all the things she’d failed at so badly when left on her own, her advice slowly but surely teaching Willow how she could even do all those things for herself if she ever woke up alone again someday. If she had to hold herself back from letting her flames dance across the world to get that, she could do it. It wasn’t as if she never had before, back in that old life of parents and teachers and doctors who wouldn’t even let her look at so much as a match.

And maybe one day they’d find a way back to the normal world, where food came easily from the store and monsters were just stories in the books Wickerbottom loved to pour over. When that happened Willow would turn around before they left and feed everything they’d built, everything they’d left to grow wild, everything that had ever attacked them or helped them or ignored completely, to her fire and finally show Wickerbottom the glory of a world flooded with light then falling to ashes.


	2. Chapter 2

With only one fire a day allowed to her, Willow had needed to become discerning. That was another word which Wickerbottom had taught her, meaning that even though everything in the world would be better if it were on fire some things were better to burn than others. She wanted each fire she was allowed to light to be the best it could possibly be, not just slap whatever she found into the fire pit and end up regretting that it was the tiniest bit less wonderful than it could have been if she’d chosen more carefully.

What she decided would make the best fire varied from day to day. There were times when she felt that it was using grass alone, spending the entire night shoving it into the pit by handfuls, watching them blaze away almost as quickly as she was able to add more. Other nights she found the knottiest most gnarled trees she could to take logs from, for the joy of watching her fire search out every little twisted crevice until it seemed to burn inside and out well before the fire truly reached its core.

That night she’d decided that bark was the way to go, old flaking bark barely clinging to the logs she’d gather which would catch at once and spark and curl and come alive as it all burned off. She’d had to travel far, but at last she’d found the perfect tree for her purposes.

She’d learned to find the sound of an axe thunking away at a hard trunk almost as lovely as the sound of flames crackling away. One lead to the other, after all, and anything that would bring her fire to her had its own type of charm. The noise was duller with this tree than usual, the bark soft enough that she thought there might be some rot in it, but it was still just as nice. Maybe nicer than usual, since the softness made it come down quicker than she was used to.

She was bending to gather her logs when she heard some different type of thunk behind her. Weeks upon weeks in her new world had taught her well enough that she dove forward at once in response to the unexpected noise, twisting as she fell to see what had managed to sneak up on her.

Weeks in her new world had also taught her how to hold back the scream that wanted to escape her when she saw what it was. It was a _tree_ , more massive than anything she’d yet run into in her dangerous new home, one of its heavy limbs smashing into the ground where she’d crouching just a moment before. Smashing down so hard that she could perfectly imagine the way it could have cracked her skull open if she’d still been there, then pausing in that position for just a moment to brush a needled twig gently over one of the logs she hadn’t yet collected.

Willow’s reaction was pure instinct, her promises wiped out of her mind in a flash. A handful of grass she’d had in her backpack was in one hand before the thought of what she was about to do even had a chance to reach her mind, her lighter in the other. The grass caught easily, stayed alight as she tossed it through the air to the log the tree was touching.

The flaky bark caught exactly as quickly as she’d expected, the twig and the tree it was attached to not far behind.

Yet it was _still moving_ , straightening up at once to swing at her again. This time a small shriek did manage to escape her, her lighter sparking again even as she did. This time a bare bush caught, then one full of berries beside it. Even her vow not to burn food plants again was gone from her mind in her rush to try to get a barrier of flame between her and the tree. But it kept coming towards her, slowly but surely, even when she guided it into a small forest where its own flaming bulk help spread the flames between the trees more quickly.

Panic was just starting to set in for good, when a voice both sharp and calm broke through the haze of fear. “For goodness sake, girl, what do you think you’re doing?” Wickerbottom clicked her tongue against her teeth, and shook her head at Willow as if she were doing something terrible foolish. “Have you somehow never run into one of these creatures before? Well, I suppose if before these past weeks you’ve always set your fires without bothering to down the tree first that could be the case.”

“Help!” Willow cried out to her, unable to understand how she could remain so calm.

“Of course. What you need to do is simple, child, and much less wasteful than simply burning everything to the ground.” She help out her hand, showing Willow a simple pinecone held in it. Then she pulled out her shovel and stood right in the rampaging tree’s path, scooping up a shovelful of dirt and planting the pinecone within it.

At once the tree settled into the ground again, as if it were rooted in place the same as any other tree. Willow started as Wickerbottom shook her head again. “Honestly, what did you think it wanted? It simply needs to see that you’re replacing its kin as you remove them. Now pull yourself together, child, if you think I’m going to allow you to let your fire rage without us even making an attempt to contain it you are sorely contain it.”

And for once Willow would not even complain at being told to put out a fire that she’d lit. Not as payment for the salvation of her own skin.


End file.
